Harlequin Superromance September 2017 Box Set

“You have a poker night?”

“Karl’s friends. I’m taking his place. In return, they take my money.” He gave her a mock-innocent look. “Something wrong with that?”

“No…just that it seems to be at odds with your hermit persona.”

He rolled the barn door shut again with his good hand. “For the record, I’m not a hermit. I just like to choose when I spend time with people. For the past four years I haven’t been able to do that. I’ve not only had to spend time with them, I’ve had to pretend I’m happy doing it.”

“What exactly did you do?”

“I saddled horses, answered questions, refrained from rolling my eyes at the dumb ones.” He gave her a pointed look. “And for the record, there are dumb questions. I liked most of the guests, but…mostly I just wanted to disappear onto my part of the ranch and raise cows and hay.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“The technicalities of a handshake agreement.”

Taylor frowned.

“I’ll explain it sometime.”

“Yeah?”

He stopped walking at the place where they would part ways. “Yeah.”

That was…surprising. She wasn’t certain she believed him, but the odd thing was that she wanted to believe him. “What’s stopping you from explaining right now?”

His gaze met hers. “I don’t know. Lack of whiskey, maybe?”

“That bad?”

He gave a short laugh. “No. It’s just…family business and I’m not a great sharer.”

Taylor slipped her thumbs into her back pockets and rocked back on her heels. “When I first met you, I had you pegged as working in the hospitality field.”

He looked almost insulted. “No kidding.”

“You were smooth and I could tell you’d worked with people. I would have guessed that you were a really good sharer. But as I get to know you better, you get rougher around the edges.” She cocked her head. “How does that work?”

“Public me. Real me.”

“You’re good at hiding ‘real you.’”

“Years of practice.”

“But you weren’t ‘public you’ with me for very long.”

“I found you threatening at first. On a number of fronts.”

Taylor lifted her eyebrows. “I find you threatening, too.”

“Yeah?” He easily followed the shift in the subject of conversation. “Still?”

“Things like this don’t dissipate overnight.” This being an attraction that could easily veer out of control. “It’s not that I’m not interested…but damn it, Cole, the timing is all wrong.”

“And you’re all about schedules.”

“At this juncture of my life, I’m all about caution and control. You’re screwing with both of those.”

* * *

TAYLOR HAD TO give Cole points for not messing with her caution and control over the next two days. In fact, she barely saw him. When she got up on Tuesday morning, ready to hit the boneyard, he was out in the field on his tractor. She found a note tacked to her door that read “No work today or tomorrow.”

It felt like a snow day. No farmwork, no temptation. Did it get any better than that?

Taylor parked herself in front of her computer and spent the morning drinking coffee and networking, sending out résumés and touching base with her contacts. Applying for everything she could possibly apply for. When she was done, she went for a run, stopping to admire the new calves playing in the fields across the road from her grandfather’s farm.

The next day she did the same, and when she was done with her run, she went to what was left of her grandmother’s vegetable garden and started thinking about what it would take to put it right again. Cole might be a farmer, but he hadn’t touched the garden. Maybe she should?

Taylor abruptly turned and headed back to the bunkhouse. What was she thinking? Gardens? She had a black thumb, and gardening had never been her thing…but she had enjoyed picking peas and digging carrots—even when she’d become too cool for the farm. There was no reason that she shouldn’t enjoy gardening again—except for the fact that she had no idea how long she was going to be there.

It would take less than six months to plant and harvest…

Great. Just what she needed. A farmer voice whispering in her ear.

To counteract it, Taylor sent a few more emails, accepted an offer for a phone interview the following week, then sent a text to Carolyn. She’d just set down her phone when a knock on the door brought her to her feet.

When she opened the door, Cole was standing a few feet away, covered in powdery dirt. “What happened?”

He looked down at his dusty jeans and T-shirt, then gave a few half-hearted slaps that raised the dust a little. “Chucky got out again. Chased the tractor, tried to go down an old badger hole. I had to lie on my stomach to get him out.”

“And he’s…”

“Back home. Mrs. Clovendale saw he was gone and came out across the field.”

“Sorry to have missed that.”

“Oh, yeah. Chucky’s a lot of fun. I just wanted to remind you that it’s poker night.”

Taylor couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face. “I know.”

“You should have at least two hours of privacy. The old guys let me and Dylan win for a while to kind of stretch things out before annihilating us.”

“Could you maybe call before you come back?”

“I could do that.”

“Sometimes I fall asleep in the tub.”

He frowned at her. “No way.”

She smiled dreamily. “I do love my baths.”

Cole blew out a breath and gave her a smile that said, “O-k-a-a-y…” before adding, “I’ll be gone in about an hour.”

“Thanks, Cole.” And she meant that from the bottom of her heart.

Exactly one hour later, before the dust had settled behind Cole’s truck, Taylor started the tub running. While it filled, she went to the kitchen, opened the wine she’d brought and poured a healthy amount into a tumbler. The thieves had made off with her wineglasses, but somehow drinking wine out of a milk glass while soaking in an old pink bathtub seemed appropriate. Her life wasn’t the same as it once was. Eventually she’d be home again, fighting deadlines and drinking wine out of crystal stemware, but in the meantime, a glass her grandmother had pulled out of a detergent box forty or fifty years ago worked.

The water was dangerously high by the time Taylor slipped out of her clothes and eased into the tub. It lapped at the edge but didn’t spill over. She slid deeper, closing her eyes as the excess water gurgled into the overflow. The wine and the book could wait. Right now she was just going to—

A bang on the door brought her upright.

Another bang and she stood up, water sheeting off her and splashing onto the floor as she grabbed her towel. She heard the kitchen door open and cursed under her breath. So much for warning phone calls…

“Hello?”

Taylor froze.

That was not Cole. Far from it. The voice was feminine.

“Cole?”

Cole had a woman in his life. That solved the problem of what to do about the kiss. Taylor hitched the towel up a little higher. She’d never been the other woman. Hell, she wasn’t the other woman now. She cracked open the door. “Hi?”

The footsteps that had passed by the bathroom stopped dead and then came back toward her. “Who are you?”

Taylor closed the door again—just in case this woman was the volatile kind. “I live next door. I don’t have a tub. Cole let me use his while he’s gone.” And it’s really my grandfather’s tub.

“There is no next door.”

“The bunkhouse. I live in the bunkhouse.”

“No one lives in the bunkhouse. I’d know.”

Guess again, honey.

“Look,” the woman continued, “if you’re hooking up with my brother, I don’t—”

Taylor opened the door. “Your brother?”

The woman, who was younger than Taylor had assumed, looked so much like Cole it was spooky. Definitely telling the truth about the relationship.

Taylor wrapped her towel a little tighter. “I’m Karl Evans’s granddaughter, Taylor.”

Cole’s sister gave her a skeptical look. “If you’re living here, then why didn’t my brother tell me?”

“Because he’s the most closemouthed individual I know?”

The sister gave a considering nod. “You might be right.” She glanced down the hall, then back at Taylor. “This is kind of embarrassing.”

“Was Cole expecting you?” The girl’s mouth tightened, and that was when Taylor noted the blotchiness around her beautiful eyes. She’d either been crying or trying hard not to cry.

“No.” She gave a small shrug. “I’m Jancey, by the way.”

“Nice name.”

“Norwegian uncle. Only his name was pronounced Yancey. I’m glad they went with ‘J.’”

“Ah.”

The girl glanced down at her very worn Western boots as if debating a course of action. “I kind of expected Cole to be here.”

“He’ll be back tonight. You could call him.”

She shook her head. “Not a phone matter.”

Taylor shivered. The house was cold. “I need to get dressed. Give me a second?” Because she didn’t want this girl, who was obviously upset, to disappear into the night.

“Sure. Maybe I’ll raid the fridge.”

“Good plan.”

Taylor pulled the door closed, dropped the towel and reached into the still deliciously warm water to pull the plug. Goodbye, first bath in forever…

She dressed in a hurry, grabbed the wine bottle, the glass and her book, and headed out into the kitchen, where Jancey was sitting at the empty table with no food in sight.

“Is the fridge empty?”

“I guess I’m really not hungry.” She folded her arms across her midsection. “I didn’t know Karl had a granddaughter. I’ve only been here a couple times. I came with Cole when they made the farming deal.”

“I used to spend summers—well, parts of summers—here. My dad grew up here.” Brought my mother here and ruined her life. Anyway, that was how Cecilia told the story.

“Why are you back?”

“I got laid off and couldn’t find a job where I lived. I needed a place to stay while I look for another job.”

“And Cole let you stay here?”

Taylor barely kept from giving a derisive snort. “We…came to an agreement.”

“Cole came here to get away from things.”

“So I gather.”

Jancey looked past Taylor to the darkened window behind her. “I might be staying here, too.”

“The more the merrier,” Taylor said lamely. Whatever the girl’s reason for moving in, Taylor didn’t think it was a happy one.

“Yeah.” Jancey attempted a smile, but it fell flat.

“If I cooked something, would you eat it?”

The girl raised her eyes. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Except that I’m starving and the stove in the bunkhouse is really old and doesn’t work very well.”

“You should get a microwave.”

“I had one, but it got stolen. And I don’t think the wiring could take it.”

“I’m surprised you’re living there. You must have fixed it up.”

“Patched a hole in the floor.” Taylor went to the cupboard to see what Cole had on hand. As she’d hoped, he had spaghetti and sauce. In her experience, pasta made everything better.

She put water on to boil, adding oil and salt. Everything was exactly where it had been when she’d stayed with her grandfather years ago. Cole had made no changes or additions to the kitchen, and Karl had barely taken anything with him.

“Are you in school?” Taylor asked as she opened the spaghetti sauce.

“I start college in the fall. I graduated high school almost a year ago and decided to work for a year so that I didn’t have to borrow as much money.”

“Great plan,” Taylor said. “I’m still haunted by loans.” And would be for some time to come.

“It was a great plan. Now…not so much.”

She spoke in a way that didn’t invite questions, so Taylor focused on cooking. “I wish I had hamburger to make a meat sauce.”

“I like plain old red sauce. Our cook does a great Bolognese, but I don’t need meat with my pasta.”

“You have a cook?”

“The ranch does.”

“You work on the guest ranch?”

Jancey’s expression closed off, and Taylor turned back to the stove. All righty, then. “Shouldn’t be too long.” She almost wished aloud for bread but didn’t want to remind Jancey of the cook again.

The phone rang, and Jancey answered. “I wanted to talk to you,” she said after hello. “I’d rather wait until you get here. Okay. See you soon.”

She hung up then smiled a little. “My brother says that you should get out of the tub.”

“Will do.” Taylor leaned back against the counter, feeling oddly nervous now that she knew Cole was on his way home. “What do you plan to study?”

“I thought about majoring in ag econ, like Cole, but my heart is set on veterinary science.”

“Cole’s degree is in…aggiecon?” Whatever that was. Taylor was surprised to hear that Cole had a degree at all, which drove home the point that she’d been as judgmental about him as he’d been about her.

“Agricultural economics.”

Ag. Econ. Ah. “That wasn’t a course of study at my university,” Taylor said with a smile.

“He was working on an MBA, too, before he left the ranch. Online.”

“No kidding.”

“Cole’s a smart guy.”

Taylor considered why he’d kept working at the guest ranch he hated, but she had a feeling that the answer was sitting in front of her.

Once the pasta was ready, Taylor strained it and dumped it into a pan on the stove. She added the pasta sauce and a little Parmesan cheese, warming everything through before getting a plate and a plastic container out of the cupboard. “You don’t care if I take mine with me, do you? I have some stuff to catch up on.”

“Are you kidding? I’m thrilled you stayed long enough to cook for me.” Her expression softened. “Thanks. I kind of needed a pick-me-up.”

Taylor loaded the wine and damp towel into the tote she’d brought. “Trust me. I totally get it.” She headed for the door just as the lights swung into the driveway. She didn’t want to look as if she were running, but for reasons she didn’t quite have a handle on, she didn’t want to be there when Cole got home.

* * *

COLE’S STOMACH WAS in a knot by the time he parked next to the house. Taylor was just leaving as he pulled into the drive. She raised a hand and scurried toward the bunkhouse. Well, at least Jancey’d had some company while she waited for him.

He pushed open the kitchen door and stepped into the heavenly scent of fresh spaghetti sauce.

“You cooked?”

Jancey snorted. “Right.”

“Taylor cooked.”

“She felt sorry for me.”

“Dare I ask why?”

“From the way she was looking at me, I’d say she’d guessed I’d been crying.” And was about to start again, which disturbed him, since Jancey wasn’t by nature a teary person.

He pulled out a chair and sat on the other side of the table. “What happened?”

“She who shall not be named.”

“That goes without saying. What did she do?” Because he was going to hurt her if she hurt his sister.

She drew in a shaky breath then exhaled. “She threatened me.”

Instant blood pressure spike. “Threatened you how?”

“She invited me to this private lunch, and we had this…dainty food…and she tried to make me feel all special. Then she said that she knew I was going to have some difficulty paying for college and that she could help me from getting too deeply into debt.”

Cole pressed his fingers to his forehead. Miranda made people feel special only when she needed something. Her minions felt special all the time, which was why they were loyal to her.

“She asked me to sell my part of the ranch to her. She told me that since I was eighteen, I could do as I wanted, according to the trust, and that you weren’t that interested in keeping the ranch—if you were, then you wouldn’t be farming fifty miles away.”

“You know that’s not true.” He hoped.

She cleared her throat. “She said you were only hanging on to your share to make her angry and if I asked you, you’d tell me to hang on for the same reason. She said it was selfish of you, when the money could help me through college.”

“I’m hanging on because it’s ours.”

Jancey gave a jerky nod as she worried the amethyst ring she wore.

“That’s not really a threat, Jancey. She tried to scam you—”

His sister’s eyes came up. “She said that if I didn’t sell, that she’d talk to people at my college. Tell them…stuff, I guess. I thought she was blowing smoke, and then I got a call from my high school counselor. College admissions called her because they were concerned I’d had someone else write my entrance essay. They sent it to her. Asked her whether it reflected my abilities.”

Cole stared at her, stunned. “I thought this just happened.”

Jancey shook her head. “It happened a couple weeks ago.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

“I…thought I could handle it. Right up…” Her voice cracked. “Right up until I got the call from Mrs. Chavez.”

“Your counselor.”

“Yeah.”

Cole leaned back in his chair, carefully unclenching his fists. She should have told him sooner, but he needed to deal with it now. He scraped his chair back and Jancey reached out to touch his hand.

“Don’t go to the ranch.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m afraid of what she’ll do.”

Cole gave a choked laugh. It was more of a question of what he would do. Mess with him, fine. Mess with his baby sister…

Cole did his best to look reassuring as he said, “There’s nothing she can do, Jancey. She wants you to think she can.”

“Look what she did to Jordan.”

“Tried to do. There’s a difference.” She’d done her best to take control of his hideaway ranch, but ultimately, Jordan had prevailed.

“She did do it to me,” his sister said darkly.

True. And she wasn’t getting away with it.

* * *

TAYLOR CLOSED HER LAPTOP, taking care not to slam it down, and got to her feet. Three, count ’em, three, rejections. Two of them were for jobs that she didn’t want, but the third rejection stung, having come after that lengthy, hope-inspiring late-afternoon Skype interview. She’d wanted that job. She stopped in front of the mirror and glared at herself.

“Three? Really?”

Max raised his head as she spun around, then laid it back on his paws, keeping his green gaze on her as she took a turn around the room, trying to get control of both her disappointment and her fears for the future.

“You may end up mousing for a living,” she told the cat, “because I think we may be stuck here forever.” Which clearly wasn’t an option, but after receiving three rejections—bam, bam, bam—the doubts started rolling in.

She didn’t want to live here forever. She had things to do, professional dragons to slay.

She had a goal list, for Pete’s sake, and “stay on the farm forever” wasn’t a line item there.

She started to shrug out of her shirt when she stopped moving. Was that…?

Oh, yeah. She could hear the now-familiar sounds of the calves stampeding around their pen and glanced at the clock. A little after ten, just as it’d been the first time Chucky had come to call. Was the Curly Terror back?

If so, at least she knew the magic words to get him out from under the grain shed. Unlike the last time that she encountered the poodle-in-the-night, Taylor didn’t feel the least bit cautious as she headed out the door. She was glad to have something else to focus on.

She strode across the gravel toward the barn with a no-nonsense stride. The calves were milling nervously around in their pen, but she didn’t see any flashes of white. She didn’t see anything threatening in the bluish light cast by the light attached to the barn, but there was a movement in the shadows.

Taylor stopped dead. What if, instead of a poodle, it was a coyote or a wolf this time? Hanging in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to spring—

“Are you okay?”

Taylor gave a small shriek as the voice came out of nowhere, then pressed a hand to her chest as she recognized Cole’s voice. Beneath her palm, her heart hammered.

“You scared the crap out of me.” She took a couple of deep breaths, willing her heart to slow down. “I thought Chucky was back.”

“Sorry about that. I startled the calves when I came out of the machine shop, so I thought I’d hang until they settled.”

She let out one last breath, then reached down to zip her sweatshirt, doing her best to regain her equilibrium during the simple act. Once zipped, she asked, “How was poker?”

“I lost.” It was a simple statement of fact. “Thanks for taking care of my sister. Feeding her, I mean.”

“She’s cute,” Taylor said, taking a few steps closer. “And she seemed upset. I didn’t want to leave her alone.”

“I appreciate that.” He fell silent as Taylor came to a stop a few feet away from him. The wind gently lifted her hair, and she pulled a hand out of her pocket to brush it away from her face.

“Do you want to be alone?” There had to be a reason he was out here when his little sister was in the house.

He breathed deeply, then raised his gaze to the dark horizon past the house. “No,” he said simply.

Amazing how one small word could mean so much.

“Me either.”

He turned his head. “Why’s that?”

“I got three rejection emails tonight. What happened to you?”

“A bully messed with my sister.”

“You’re kidding.” She felt a sudden welling of protectiveness toward a girl she didn’t even know. Jancey seemed like an okay kid. “Who?”

“Our step-aunt. The one who has control of our ranch.”

“The handshake deal.”

“Followed by a lot of paperwork.”

Taylor looked down at the clumped-up dirt in the dimly lit pen. The calves had settled, and the night was quiet. She focused on Cole, who was still staring out across the dark fields. “What did she do?”

Cole shook his head.

Taylor moved forward to rest her forearms on the rail next to him, keeping her gaze on him. “Do you know why I’m the perfect person to talk to?”

He glanced over at her. “Why?”

“Sometimes an outsider sees things in a different way. And I don’t know anyone to gossip to. Win.”

He let out a short breath. “There’s pretty much only one way to see this.” He dropped his gaze and shook his head. When he looked up again, he met her eyes in a way that made her insides tumble. “But I will confess to having thought about getting your take on this.”

“Why didn’t you?” Neither had moved, but it felt as if he were closer.

“Just wasn’t there yet.”

“You know,” she said softly, “I’m pretty sure I’d rather have three job rejections than find out someone had messed with my sister. The rejections are about me. The bullying…”

“Makes me want to punch Miranda’s face in.”

“That’s your step-aunt?”

“That’s her. She messed with Jancey’s college application. Did her some damage credibility-wise.”

Taylor’s mouth fell open. “Will you be able to straighten out the matter?”

“We hope.”

Taylor thought about how devastated she would have been had someone messed with her applications. The journey to success started in high school and segued into college. That had been hammered into her for so long that, even now, it shocked her to think of someone messing with another person’s educational future. “What exactly did she do to Jancey?”

“Suggested that her entry essay was written by someone else.”

Taylor shook her head. “That’s low. Very low.”

“Welcome to Miranda World.”

“Which college?”

“Danner.”

Taylor was familiar with the school. Small but prestigious. Located near Boise. She’d worked with at least one person who’d graduated from there. “If there’s anything I can do—”

Cole reached out and covered her hand with his. Shock at the unexpected contact was quickly followed by warmth, and Taylor found that she no longer had a whole lot to say. Cole squeezed her fingers, then slid his hand away. A silent bit of communication from a guy who didn’t share easily. He hadn’t exactly spilled his secrets, but he was opening up to her, little by little. And even if things proved to be complicated, she wouldn’t give back this moment.